February 23, 2008

Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t agree with him on anything, but he seems like a person that’s not about to just explode. And Hillary and McCain really seem that way to me. So that makes the election kind of fun.

Obama is a skilled orator of nothing. However if you scratch him a little, you turn up the most left-wing senator around. The most anti-2nd amendment senator around. He's an uber-socialist in reform-clothing. The only reason he's winning right now is the absolutely pathetic competition he's up against. Hillary, McCain - you've gotta be kidding. Giants these are not. Well Hussein is a political midget himself, but I guess all of this is a sign that America is doing pretty well. When we truly need great leadership we elect a Reagan. When we don't we elect a Hussein.

It is remarkable how every Obama supporter bases their opinion of him on the most shallow of reasons. He is nice, he is sensible, he speaks well, he is clean and articulate, yada yada. Hope change hope change.

"You know, nearly 36 years ago I came to Austin for my very first political job, and that was registering voters in south Texas. And I had the great privilege of living for a while in Austin and in San Antonio, and meeting people and making friends that have stayed with me for a lifetime. And I found that we had a lot in common, a lot of shared values -- a belief that hard work is important, that self-reliance and individual responsibility count for a lot.

"there were rocky periods during my youth when I made mistakes and was off course. And what was most important in my life was learning to take responsibility for my own -- my own actions -- learning to take responsibility for not only my own actions, but how I can bring people together to actually have an impact on the world."

Hillary "It takes a Village" Clinton said that?As for Obama, the one thing that has impressed me about him is his refusal (thus far) to play the race card. This week we have learned why - his wife, perennial victim Michelle, stands ready to play the race card at every opportunity. Very nice strategy.

"There’s this sense among liberals, and McCain too, that the government is supposed to protect us from rich people, and they seem to forget that rich people are supposed to protect us from the government, that’s part of the way it works."

I wonder what the anti-wealth, anti-greed, anti-corporate, Hillary Clinton- who now has vast wealth through greed- would say about that.

Hillary "It takes a Village" Clinton said that? As for Obama, the one thing that has impressed me about him is his refusal (thus far) to play the race card. This week we have learned why - his wife, perennial victim Michelle, stands ready to play the race card at every opportunity. Very nice strategy.

12:23 PM

His wife will certainly do him in. Why did he even marry that harpie? There's nothing attractive about her.

Get real Althouse Cohen. Sure, liberals like Barack talk about personal responsibility for themselves - they believe in it for themselves, just not for the rest of America. Believing in personal responsibility means believing that others should take personal responsibility for their own actions. Liberals in general frown on this, which is why they propose the nanny state and demand that criminals be released, etc...

Supporting universal hlth care actually is an argument for Sloan's and my view- that libs including Hillary and Obama would never espouse personal responsibility for all. Afterall, personal responsibility would require us to judge people. Libs don't do judgmental- you know that.

"I have always hated Hillary, but given a choice between the she-devil I know and this uber-socialist Hussein in sheep's clothing, I'd pick Hillary. At least she's predictable."

I wouldn't.

The Presidency of Jimmy Carter was the worst I have seen in my life, and reading back further I would say the worst since the Great Depression. But we survived it, and it inoculated the country against some pretty bad ideas for several decades.

The risk with Obama is that he's another Carter-- further left than people realize, naive, etc.

The possibility, though, that he can help transcend the partisan nightmare that has been at the core of this country since the end of the first Bush presidency, is very appealing.

I am not sure the risk is worth the reward (I am still mulling it over; I am leaning towards thinking it is). If it is, then I will vote Obama. If it isn't, then McCain is a perfectly acceptable second choice. We don't have to accept a continuation of the politics of the 90s and 00s.

Re sitmeter, the stats are really interesting. There are a good number of eyeballs from Madison of course. I think I am recorded as being from Narberth, PA via Comcast but that is not my actual location.

Back to politics and personal responsibility. I would support a candidate who said he believed in personal responsibility of every Americans and so he decided to get rid of all social welfare programs and just give everyone a check every month for let's say $1,000.

Then you could buy hlth insurance or illegal drugs or get drunk everyday (like Trooper) or use to clothe and feed your family. Why don't they do that? Because they really don't believe in personal respnsibility?

And Trooper I am not criticizing your lifestyle; I am actually jealous of it.

That's ok AJ. A pleasant buzz is not getting drunk. It's a cultural thing you know. The Irish enjoy their pint at the end of a hard day. The Italians love a little vino with the meal. As long as you eat a hearty meal you will be good to go. Come by for a meal and some wine, and a little after dinner Sambucca or grappa. Life will seem a lot better, trust me for it is so.

Btw, I heard Glenn Reynolds is back and he had trouble getting Althouse to stop posting to his blog. She just would not stop. He had to get an injunction and pull the plug on her login ID. I am not making this up.

The risk with Obama is that he's another Carter-- further left than people realize, naive, etc.

It was not how far left Carter was. It was his total lack of competency. The man was an abject failure because he was incompetent. He thought he could run the country like his peanut farm. He was nothin but a good ole boy who should have stayed in Georgia, just like the last good ole boy who should have stayed in Arkansas.

That's crazy talk AJ. Who would obsessively post over and over again about every trivial matter? You would have to be half a nut job. It's obsessive-compulsive behavior...Wait a minute...someone is at the door...Hey, that’s a nice white jacket...why does it tie at the back..hey wait a minute..argh!

"Btw, I heard Glenn Reynolds is back and he had trouble getting Althouse to stop posting to his blog. She just would not stop. He had to get an injunction and pull the plug on her login ID. I am not making this up."

Didn't work too well. She just made some new posts. So did Michael Totten. Was there an injunction against him too?

Would he be a legal realist, even though he argues that he is a Christian? Has he published law articles?

What do you think, by the way, of the tradition of legal realism?

I'm reading Harold J. Berman's Law & Revolution, about Luther's impact on the western legal tradition Harvard UP 2003. He complains a lot in the cracks about the tradition of legal realism and how it wiped out the ten commandments as the basis of law, and basically left the study of law in a vaccuum of values.

Wiping out those monuments about the Ten Commandments seems to be the last phase of that.

john althouse cohen is a hillary supporter just like i amexcept ive been a hillary supporterbecause i was afraid of getting squashed by the clintons et albeing only a cockroach and allbut now ive seen the light and have a better reason to support hillary

yes the reason is sandwicheshillary spent 95k dollars on uneaten ham and baloney sandwiches in iowai have every reason to believe she will be just as generousto us cockroaches once she is in the white houseand the federal govt will supply stale sandwiches to cockroachesfree of chargeoh hillary we have found a new reason to love youand id like mayonnaise on mine thanks

I like this: I think there’s a big misunderstanding in a lot of people that think the elections are supposed to go smoothly. They’re too important to go smoothly, they should go crazy. And I’m hoping that Bloomberg injects some nuts into this.

The possibility, though, that he can help transcend the partisan nightmare that has been at the core of this country since the end of the first Bush presidency, is very appealing.

1:07 PM

The thing is that the hyper-partisanship really began right after Watergate. It's been pretty toxic since 1973 in this country. It only gets worse every year. To tell the truth, the leftists are far more vitriolic then the right wingers. Daily Kos, Huffington are always more hateful then RedState and Free Republic.

MadMan wrote...sloan: If you don't believe them when they say they're all for personal responsibility, why do you believe them when they say they want Universal Health Care?

Because personal responsibility doesn't increase the government's scope and power. Insofar as it's reflected in action, it would reduce the government's scope and power.

You know, a lot of lefties play the "hypocrisy" game with the GOP, with things like Larry Craig or whatever, when the real hypocrisy is that (Reagan-and-after) they campaign on getting the government out of your way. But (post-Reagan) they haven't really done that.

"Trust us: When we get into power, we won't spend your money and we won't intrude into your lives."

"The thing is that the hyper-partisanship really began right after Watergate."

I disagree. I was speaking about the latest bout. We have had bouts of this going back throughout the history of the country. Although frequent, it is not healthy, IMO.

The hyper-partisanship did not start with Watergate. I believe it hit the apex with Watergate. The Ford-Carter-Reagan-Bush years were lulls in the partisanship to my eyes. There was some partisanship, but it was significantly less (and more realistically grounded) than it was before then, or than it has been since then.

Whenever we get to where the accepted norms are the type of bullshit Eli Blake throws around or to nuttiness of Cedarford or any of the truthers or the rightwingers who won't vote for McCain because he isn't in lockstep with them, then it is time for us to relieve the pressure lest the boiler explode.

Obama offers that. And if he controls his leftist impulses, he could actually turn out to be a hell of a President. And if he doesn't, then his election will be the relief of the pressure build-up that is needed coupled with a few hard years where the country is reminded that leftism is a pretty bad idea and keeps getting rejected here for a reason.

"It was not how far left Carter was. It was his total lack of competency."

It is amazing just how few truly competent people there are who are believers in the furthest left philosophies. Every time these ideas are tried, it is always the fault of those incompetents that it didn't work.

I will concede, however, the Carter was incredibly incompetent. I believe though that had he tried to govern a bit more centrist, as he had campaigned, he would have found it easier to maintain a degree of competence that perpetually eluded him.

There are reasons most Americans yearn for good centrist leadership-- when tried, it tends to work. I am not talking about the mushy centrism of George W. Bush, but the more assertive centrism of Reagan and Clinton-- they each were off-center, but close enough at the end of the day to claim the middle, and they did it their way, rather than by being led by Congress. And yes I know that Reagan gave amnesty and signed massive spending increases, and I know Clinton signed welfare reform and other 'triangulations'. But for the most part, they took the initiative and gained the center's approval and governed from there.

Plausible theory but high risk involved. I like it and could even convince myself you are right. But I have concerns (if you are wrong) the country could be ruined in a span of just 4 years.

Back to Watergate- but it did ruin journalism. Never before had so many liberal wusses flocked to a field to "change the world". And they became bitter, frustrated middle class jerks who were jealous of the success of those they covered and deemed inferior: the dumber but richer athlete, the less worthy but richer businessman, the mediocre but more famous actor or sleezy but more powerful politician.

And they took out their frustration on the standards and practices of their own industry and became advocates for liberal policies. IMHO.

Ask yourself this - if the media are so altruistic why have they chased the big buck as hard as any other group? There is a reason many "journalists" now have multiple sources of income (i.e cable network, daily newspaper, radio show, book publisher). Ask yourself how they can possibly maintain journalistic integrity?

I don't have that romantic vision of journalists. I don't think journalists ever had that romantic vision of themselves until the whole 60s/boomers/narcissistic generation. They said the same BS so often that they came to believe it about themselves, and had a whole next generation which believed it about them, when in fact it was never true.

Journalists write. They get to do so only as long as they have a way to get paid. They are not gatekeepers of the truth. They are not any more needed than people who pick up the garbage or clean the toilets or build bridges or design bridges. All the other romantic crap was nothing more than a myth. A self-serving myth.

Ssssssssh. I was just joshing captian serious. I'm really just a fat guinea. But some times when you blog you have to pretend to be someone else to fit in. That's why when I go on BO's blog I use the screen name:

How do you equate Barack's statement about taking personal responsibility with the policies he is espousing. None of them mean people take responsibility. In fact he is taking responsibility for them rather than have them take any responsibility. Is he the only one who is allowed to take responsibility?

Every time these ideas are tried, it is always the fault of those incompetents that it didn't work.

It's interesting that you say that's some sort of attribute of the Left, because I hear that line a lot from conservatives when they talk about Dubya, DeLay, etc. It's not the movement or the ideas behind it that failed, it's the people in Washington who failed! Oh, but don't worry, if we get some real conservatives in there (if you introduce conservative policies and they are shown to fail, apparently that means those policies aren't conservative anymore) it'll all be different next time.

In fact, since WWII, I would say that every left (as opposed to center-left) President we have had has been a disaster (Carter, LBJ). The Center-left have been good/decent (Truman, Kennedy, Clinton). The center-right have been good/decent (Reagan, Bush I, Ford).

And then there has been the current President. Not sure if I would call him right or center right, and I am not sure he'll look as bad in five years as he does now. But it really doesn't matter in his case for the argument above. Experience tells me that if we elect someone who governs from the left as opposed to the center left, we're going to have problems, it will be a one term Presidency, and we'll probably swing right for several terms thereafter.

Hopefully, that will be sufficient for Obama to realize the path to success lies towards the center.

I'd consider Bush II as hard right. Reagan was more right than the others on your list though he did moderate a lot by the end of his term. Eisenhower on the other hand was a centrist. Nixon is so complicated I'd never be able to pin him down as either.

I take issue with your claim that LBJ was a liberal. He wasn't. True he advocated the 'great society,' but he also was a war-monger, though an inept one (which is why he lost his chance at a second term-- and it was ant-war leftists who chased him out of the race by supporting Eugene McCarthy).

But Eli, you are a complete partisan wingnut who seems to think he is sensible when he starts saying that John McCain represents a mafia resurgence. So you taking issue with the way I categorize candidates really doesn't bother me much.

I would like to get a commenter-to-English translator, because I can't imagine in what sense:

1. Obama is a (an uber-) socialist2. Michelle Obama played the race card.3. Reagan provided truly great leadership4. Michelle Obama is a perennial victim.5. Universal health insurance is an abdication of personal responsibility. Right now, the lack of universal health insurance adds $1000 to the cost of an American-made car, making our products uncompetitive. Universal health insurance will lead to a boom in entrepreneurial activity, as many people cling to a job they hate for fear of major illness.

I do agree that Carter was the least competent president in living memory until W. came along. W.'s 100 year war in Iraq makes the Iranian hostage crisis look like an unpaid parking ticket. At least Carter did not spend the Social Security trust fund on an attempt to impress his daddy. And although the dollar sagged while Carter was in office, it did not give up 40% of its value against European currencies.

The census data indicates there are 47 million without health insurance. About 25-35% of those are in households that make $75,000 and theoretically they could afford some form of minimal or catastrophic insurance. I personally know several folks like this and they have chosen to spend their money on something else while I chose to pay my family's premiums. That is what a commenter may have meant re the personal responsibility factor.

In addition, about 12-15 millionof the uninsured are not citizens yet. Should we cover people from Day One when they arrive here? Or should they take that personal responsibilty themselves? Lastly, about 10 million of the uninsured are the young 20-30 years old who could get insurance relatively cheaply (except in over-regulated states like New Jersey). Many of these young also have chosen to spend their money on other things. That is only natural but also a case of abdication of personal responsibility. Re the automakers, they are full of shit in one way. They negotiated the programs in good faith with their unions and now the automakers are using it as s bargaining chip to puch for govt paid insurance figuring that could cut their costs somewhat. I do agree that they may be at a disadvantage with other countries but that is another issue entirely. If the govt goes to universal coverage, the taxpayers get stuckwith the premiums and i.e GM makes more money. Is that what you favor? I would support flatout govt subsidies to our car industry to match the foreign-govt subsidies the foreign carmakers get. But again you are mixing apples and oranges when you fall into GM/ Ford's lament that oh woe is them. They overpaid their workers and retirees contractually! And now they want out of those contracts.

Let me add this in respnse to your prediction that "universal health care will lead to a boom in entrepreneurial business because people will break the chains that bind them to heartless jobs but provide health insurance"(I paraphrased a bit.

What the fluff are you smoking? Entreprenuers in this country have never let a lack of health insurance stop them. You have been to too many cocktail parties where some balless cube-dweller bullshits you that he would be the next Microsoft if only this country was like Denmark and gave him health insurance. Let me clue you in on something- people who tell you that will never take a chance and that is what an entrepreneur does buddy.

What you are really saying is that if people had more capital (i.e fewer bills), they would take more chances and try to start a business. I agree with this sentiment and I guess I have to since I just wrote it.

But again you are mixing apples and oranges a bit but I like your spirit. Glad I could help.